Again, playing on the contextual rationalization process that is evident is sports writers today. If faced with a Ty Cobb character on the 2017 ballot, you all know that he'd be castigated as a racist bigoted homophobe and unworthy - regardless of his contributions on the field. By you position, the Confederate Battle Flag should be perfectly fine (which I agree with btw). However as of current events it's vilified, guilt by association. Again to be clearer, BBWA voters obviously aren't just voting between the lines. I didn't think we disagreed on this, lol!
...and again, being a slave holder, Thomas Jefferson would also be vilified in 2017...you can't go backwards.
Ah. But that's exactly what our liberal media already does, sportswriters included. Thus the importance of stats as a comparative measure that theoretically mitigates the temporal relativity. Cobb's career should be viewed only through the prism of comparison to peers and then baseball history. But you have Yahoo's that would look past that and to him personally. Same thing is gonna happen with PED era. There will be known cheaters broken down into good guys and bad guys....Say Petitte vs Clemens. And then guys suspected but we're not sure. They too will be qualified by personal traits. This is why Ortiz will likely get in, but someone else won't. BBWA is always going to bias their voting with emotion and not purely statistical rigor.
...but Pettitte came clean right away, while Clemens, Bonds, et al, continue to claim they were clean....and even if Andy had not used PEDs he'd have a hard time getting into the HOF based on his numbers. But conversely, if Bonds and Clemens had admitted right away that they were users and apologized and shown even the slightest bit of remorse, they'd probably both be in by now...or at the very least, greatly increased their chances. The same can be said for Pete Rose. ...and of course most BBWA vote with emotion, and they should... instead of purely based on numbers, and they shouldn't. ...Bonds, Clemens et al, will always have their stats and their ill-gotten money, most of which was earned under false pretenses. But they selfishly separated themselves from the herd by cheating. ...the HOF is a completely different entity from MLB itself sorry...and there's a reason why it is called "The Hall of Fame" instead of "The Hall of Infamy".
Well let's look at it this way, with limited ballot time, it won't take long to see which interpretation bears out.
...well, I think that more than anything else, the fact that starting next year the ballots will be made public, will change a lot of voters' position.
gotta' love the transparency,... http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18473918/transparency-make-hall-fame-voting-whole-new-game
^^^I suppose that the new "transparency" could work for or against certain players...I guess we'll find out this time next year.
